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Progressives across Wisconsin, and across the country, are feeling crushed by the defeat of Sen. Russ Feingold, one of the finest Senators ever to represent the Badger state.

Feingold lost 52-47 to Ron Johnson, a wealthy plastics manufacturer with no political experience.

The old rules of politics no longer apply.

You can win every debate, as Feingold did.

You can get practically every newspaper endorsement in the state, as Feingold did, including some very conservative ones.

You can be a loyal and dutiful servant of your constituents, coming home every weekend and visiting every county every year, as Feingold did.

And you can still lose.

One reason is money, and the hideous Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case, which opened the floodgates.

“Common Cause of Wisconsin estimated the total spent at $40 million to $45 million for the senate race, a record amount. Outside groups spent about $5 million, most of that on ads opposing Feingold,” according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

How ironic it is that Feingold, who more than any other Senator tried to limit the poisonous influence of corporate money in politics, succumbed to that very disease.

For instance, the AP ran a story about a Wisconsinite opposing Feingold because she said he voted for the bank bailout. When the reporter informed her that Feingold actually voted against the bank bailout, that didn’t change her mind. She responded that the Democrats still spent too much.

Poor Feingold. More than most Democrats, he was a deficit hawk, but that counted for nothing on Tuesday.

He drummed into voters’ minds that Feingold’s first name was “career” and middle name was “politician.”

And he stood in front of gorgeous Wisconsin scenery in ad after ad, and talked about the need to cut spending and to bring a businessman’s perspective—not another lawyers’ perspective—to D.C.

Feingold’s ads, by contrast, were often ineffective, and he refused to go as negative as he could have, and he told liberal outside interest groups not to advertise for him.

As a result, voters didn’t hear often enough, for instance, that Johnson thinks man-made global warming is “lunacy,” that Johnson opposes extending unemployment insurance because he doesn’t want people to have an incentive not to work. Most crucially, we didn’t hear at all that Johnson actually testified before the state legislature earlier this year on the side of the employers of pedophiles! Johnson wanted to limit the financial awards that victims of pedophiles could get from those employers. He sided against the victims, and most candidates would have hammered him for that. Feingold gave him a pass.

Now Feingold leaves with his dignity and his principles intact.

I didn’t agree with Russ Feingold on everything.

He was too much of a deficit hawk for me.

And his reflexive defense of Israeli government policies toward the Palestinians was at odds with his otherwise stellar human rights record.

But he was a fantastic Senator.

You won’t find a smarter, more diligent, more independent, more courageous person in that chamber.

He was the reincarnation of Fighting Bob La Follette, but with shorter hair.

He was the only Senator to vote against the USA Patriot Act, and his speech against it could have come right out of La Follette’s mouth.

Said Feingold: “There is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch the terrorists. . . . But that wouldn’t be a country in which we would want to live, and it wouldn’t be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that country wouldn’t be America.”

He was the only Democratic Senator to vote against the financial reform law because he said, rightly, that it didn’t do enough to prevent another banking crisis.

He led the fight against destructive trade deals like NAFTA.

He opposed the Iraq War.

He voted against the deregulation of Wall Street and the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

He fought for media reform.

He railed against the malignancy of corporate power, stressing, as La Follette did, that it is destroying not only our economy but also our democracy.

By Wendell Berry

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion—put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Wendell Berry is a poet, farmer, and environmentalist in Kentucky. This poem, first published in 1973, is reprinted by permission of the author and appears in his “New Collected Poems” (Counterpoint).